Let's Exchange the Experience
by Mel like Mellow
Summary: Buffy-centric. Season 6 angst. "There's just pain, and hate, and nothing you do means anything! You can't even--" Buffy is certainly on the other side.


**let's exchange the experience**

There's a virus,burrowing underneath her skin and spreading into all the parts of her being, every day. It should burn, this crumbling of her entity, she knows it should. Instead, it's like a dull decaying of her insides – slowly, but certainly.

She wishes she could stop chewing her nails long enough so that they could grow, so she could scratch it out.

She sighs, long and drawn out, like she's trying to expel every particle of air from her lungs. Her eyes feel like they're hollow. It's watercolors that she's walking through.

That ache inside, she recognizes that. It's pain – lingering, festering pain. It hurts all over, in between every joint and every muscle, and it never lets up but overwhelms constantly. Sometimes, she wonders how she wakes up in the morning. The effort it takes to draw up out of bed, to open her eyes. She dreads that sunlight that filters through the blinds of her room (she tries so hard to keep them tight) and falls over her eyelids, waking her.

She never realized how little she knew of agony until her eyes rolled forward and she gasped that dusty first breath and felt the molten, searing heat of her flesh regenerating and her hair follicles swelling and her lungs bursting painfully.

Nevermind bloodied knuckles caked with dirt and debris or the sting of oxygen sifting through pores or the burn of light against unready retinas.

Then there's the other. The one in place of gratitude and adoration and love that logic tells her she should feel. It's so unmistakable, even though she's never really felt it so strongly until now.

Hate, as true to her system now as her calling. Like vomit, acidic and sticky and stuck in her throat.

It comes in waves, usually when she's not expecting it. Sitting in the Magic Shop, scribbling nonsense at the top of a notebook (it's all nonsense anyway), when suddenly Xander's voice cracks a certain way and she snaps the pen in half and ink gets all over the place. Then everyone's all worried and making jokes about 'Buffy not knowing her own strength' and they offer napkins and roll their eyes behind their books. Only, she doesn't want to wipe it up, because the stain that lingers is fascinating. She finds herself staring off, hypnotized by the clarity found in running water and ink spills – like holes in the earth, and she's waiting for them to open up so she can swan dive into bliss again.

In her head, there's nothing but thunder pounding over and over. A rainstorm that just hasn't gotten here yet. When she goes out to slay, there's nothing but the motions; sense memory of what she should do and when. Her brain's never there, she thinks it got left behind in that grave that they're supposed to pretend was never really there.

There was a time when the movement was more than that – it was the only truth, the only answer to anything and everything. When she didn't understand something else, she knew that this … this was real. This was feeling, this was what duty and what life and what death felt like. All in her hands, made by her hands, and she could feel it.

Now it's out there in the ether, intangible and impalpable, like she didn't ever really have a hold on it. Like it's all some figment of her imagination. And that makes her so furious, to second guess herself like that, to have to force herself to reflect that no, it was real, but it was just taken away. Cloth between her fingers. Sand down the hourglass. Whatever pearly phrase you want to use for how this delicate thing was ripped from her - or how she was torn from it.

The moon is low and dawn's approaching, and she thinks of Faith. Tucked neatly in her prison cell, at peace and safe away from the rest of the world. She actually envies her – _her!_ - thinking of her smiling and serene and content with herself. She gets so caught up in the visual that somehow her foot winds up through Thomas James Sinclair's tombstone and there's blood on her tongue and teeth.

She sniffs the air and feels tiny hairs rise on her arms and on her neck. So close to light? How daring.

He rounds a hedge and she takes the formal stance, chin upright and eyes right through him. Her mind's on a rooftop in L.A. in the dead of night, with the sounds of helicopters on the horizon and a vague sense of self-righteousness beating firmly in her chest.

_You can't stand that._ He approaches, stalking and sensing her out. _You're all about control._ Her fist throws out abruptly once he's within range, knocking him stumbling on his heels. _You have no idea what it's like on the other side! _The sight of his confusion and brief flicker of pain renders her irritation and she grits her teeth behind bee-stung lips.

Heart pumping wildly in her chest; it's filtering blood and life throughout the intricate system. She sees his pupils dilate and swallows, loathing her heart and its steady **thump-thump**, **thump-thump** that beckons him to her every night.

_Nothing's in control_! He lunges, she dodges and gasps as his hand -- _Nothing makes sense! _-- grabs for her wrist (the hand with the stake) and twists. She cries out loud into the chilled air.

_There's just pain -- _She tugs back and he yanks her forward, pushing her arm up and behind her, into her lower back and -- _and hate -- _she knows what's coming next, pants into his face and grunts -- _and nothing you do means anything! -- _as his mouth collides on top of hers and he mumbles something—then her name--

_You can't even -- _

"Shut up!" She hisses vehemently through her teeth, willing back the bile that's ebbing up her throat as she recollects shame and embarrassment. His lips trace along the column of her neck, and she lets him and it feels like a bunch of little deaths inside.

She hates this part almost more than that constant ache that pulses down, down, down because she knows that _this_ is what it's like on the other side, and it's everything she said it would be.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Artsy-fartsy kind of look into Buffy's mindset during Season 6. I got inspired by Placebo's cover of "Running Up That Hill" and a clip of Buffy and Faith arguing in Angel episode "Sanctuary" (Season 1, Episode 19). Faith's comments about "the other side" (featured in my fic in italics) made me think that that's probably how Buffy felt in Season 6. Instead of murdering people, she used Spike to her sexual advantage.


End file.
